Production Outage Handling
Question
Tell me about a time you had to deal with a significant production issue or outage. How did you handle it?
No matter how well-architected a system is, no matter how much testing is done, at some point, something will break. A server will fail. A bad deployment will slip through. A downstream dependency will go offline.
Production will go down.
These moments are the most stressful, high-pressure situations in a tech organization. The clock is ticking, money is being lost, and customers are angry. How a person behaves in this crisis is a true test of their character, their technical skills, and their professionalism.
This is not a theoretical exercise. Interviewers want to know if you can be trusted when the alarms are blaring.
Your answer to this question reveals whether you are someone who adds to the chaos or someone who brings order to it.